


Mr. Snow and Mr. Summers

by IncurableNecromantic



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: 'but he's really hOT', Alternate Universe, M/M, Monsters in Disguise, Obliviousness, Pretending to be Humans and Being Very Bad at It, Suburbia, Unresolved Romantic Tension, to the tune of 'ew oh fuck I'm attracted to a human ew eW'
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-22 18:27:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6090019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncurableNecromantic/pseuds/IncurableNecromantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mr. Snow is a cold and brittle music teacher.  Mr. Summers is a warm and unflappable great-grandfather.  They live down the street from each other, get mixed up in all sorts of neighborhood matters, and sometimes manage to spend a little time together.</p><p>Neither of them are human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mr. Snow and Mr. Summers Break and Enter

He wished he could trust these people, he really did. He didn’t like living in endless suspicion and being obliged to cast doubt upon the things people say to him. That was not how they did things in Pottsfield, goodness knew.

But these people just weren’t his kind of people, and they most certainly weren’t dead. He’d always had such an uneasy detente with the living. The living oozed, and they were never as clean as they ought to be. It just wasn’t normal.

He loaned one group of humans an almanac, one he’d written himself as an entertainment. It wasn’t very important, really, but he’d loaned it three whole days ago and they still hadn’t given it back. Obviously they had either little intention of doing so or they simply were being thoughtless.

If they were Pottsfielders, he could’ve just asked if they were slow readers, and he would’ve happily given them more time. But not so. They were living humans, and you couldn’t know what kinds of things were going on in their little heads. Their brains had too many ripples and it made them behave strangely.

Meanwhile, Enoch had annotations to make. So what else could he do?

The lock on the door wasn’t much of anything, not once he’d crushed and twisted the knob, and it seemed that the family didn’t keep their door bolted. He smiled to himself. This would be very quick and neat.

He examined the first floor but could not find his almanac. Wading through the darkness of the house, he managed to creep up the stairs, listening for breathing. That was the nice thing about the living–at least they made so much noise, you could always hear them coming.

But the family wasn’t in tonight. Strange, but convenient! They must be out and about, visiting other living people.

He heaved a sigh of relief with his strange ballooning lungs and picked through the master bedroom. There, on the end table beside the bed and its crumpled, tangled bedding, he found his book.

He picked it up and brought it with him back towards the stairs.

Mr. Snow was standing at the bottom of the staircase, staring up at him through the gloom.

He knew that living humans sometimes suffered from an attack called a stroke. It afflicted their ripply brains, apparently, with a loss of nutrients and oxygen causing the cells to die. Really, any little thing could make a mortal die, but he had a little experience with this particular malady because one of the Howdens had died of it ages ago. (Those who’d buried Mrs. Howden had thought, at the time, that her symptoms were the product of some kind of demonic possession. Humans.)

He thought Mr. Snow might’ve had a stroke before. He was completely lucid–perhaps more lucid than most people–and utterly inoffensive, but he did have some problems with his facial expressions, and he stood more perfectly still than anyone Enoch had ever seen before. He thought Mr. Snow might be a little paralyzed.

For all of this, his voice was beautiful, his speech was as clear as fresh ice, and he was, at least in Enoch’s opinion, an extremely charming man. Especially for a human. He was always so wonderfully pale and thin and spotlessly clean.

Mr. Snow looked up at Enoch with his pale unblinking eyes.

“Good evening,” Enoch smiled, knowing he’d been caught. No worries. Mr. Snow was a reasonable man. He knew how to be discreet. “How do you do?”

Mr. Snow made a very slight divot between his eyebrows. “Hello, Mr. Summers. This isn’t your house.”

“No, no, of course not,” Enoch half-sang, amused. “Nor is it yours.”

Mr. Snow watched him. Enoch descended the steps on his two heavy feet. He never had enough limbs these days. It was so absurd.

“Why are you here,” Mr. Snow said. He never asked. Enoch liked that.

“Picking up a book I loaned the family,” Enoch replied. He held the almanac up. “They must be out of town.”

Mr. Snow’s eyes slid slowly off of Enoch and towards the back door.

“Yes,” Mr. Snow said, looking back at Enoch just as slowly. “Yes, I think that is what happened.”

“Are you here to pick up a book, as well?”

Mr. Snow’s body tensed.

“I’m here for food,” he replied.

“Hm?” Enoch hummed. It took on a little trill. Oops.

“That is–I’m feeding,” Mr. Snow said. His eyes were widening.

“Oh, yes. Don’t they have a–” Oh, whatever did they call those things? The hateful things, the biting, tearing things, the things that snapped and snarled– “A dog? You must be here to feed it for them while they’re away. That’s thoughtful of you.”

Mr. Snow watched him for a few long seconds. After a little while, he squinted. “A dog…”

“Canine? I think the littlest one takes it around on a leash?”

“Oh,” Mr. Snow said, eyes widening again. His mouth did a tight, tense thing that roughly approximated a smile. Enoch smiled back at it, charmed by the effort Mr. Snow was making to show his amusement. “The digging thing. It tore up one of my rosebushes. No. As a matter of fact, they do not have a dog.”

Enoch laughed aloud at this information, and heard something that sounded very much like Mr. Snow’s whispery, sinister chuckle of laughter.

“Well, never mind…it’s still thoughtful of you to come by. Are you engaged this evening?” It was still early, not yet two a.m.

Mr. Snow tilted his head. “I am not.”

“Won’t you come along with me, then? I’d just love to make you a cup of coffee–” Rancid, vile stuff, but everyone drank it and he couldn’t reveal his lack of humanity by rejecting it. “–and maybe we can talk a little.”

Mr. Snow looked at him and tilted his head to the other side.

“No,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

Mr. Snow spun on his heels and moved soundlessly through the dark house. Enoch waited, curious, and heard the refrigerator open and close.

Mr. Snow reappeared and held up a plastic half-gallon jug of apple cider. “This. We’ll have this.”

Enoch grinned broadly and gently took the bottle in one hand. That was a decent thing about this body, he supposed–he was able to be much bigger than most mortals, but not so much that they took it amiss.

“Much better!” he agreed. “A much better flavor, Mr. Snow.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Mr. Snow said.

“What? You’ve never drunk apple cider before?” Enoch asked, opening the knobless door for his neighbor. Mr. Snow stepped out onto the porch. The poor man, to have never drunk apple cider! At least Enoch had been able to drink it, even if it had to be while in the cat skin.

“No,” Mr. Snow said. “I have not tasted it. But I have smelled it.”

“Ahhhh,” Enoch sang. “And you like the smell?”

Mr. Snow led the way down the steps and out onto the walk. Enoch noticed for the first time that he was carrying bottles of his own: two plastic two-gallon jugs, both full of something so dark it was almost black. Mr. Snow seemed very frail to be carrying so much weight, but apparently he was stronger than he looked.

They walked down the street together, in the dark, under the street lamps.

“I know the smell very well,” Mr. Snow said at last. He sounded a little hesitant and Enoch thought he could see Mr. Snow’s ears were turning that peculiar red that indicated shyness, or embarrassment, or, sometimes, lust. “I…used to know someone whose…house often smelled like cider.”

What a lucky creature Mr. Snow’s cider person was, to be remembered by such a nice man, and by fragrance alone! And fondly remembered indeed, if the cider person made Mr. Snow’s ears turn embarrassed-shy-lustful. Enoch knew what was considered a normal reaction to this kind of information–he’d seen the gossipier of his beloved townspeople do it a thousand times. Carefully, carefully, thinking about his own strength and the fragility of mortal balance and how much more serious broken hips were when they were wrapped in muscles and flesh, Enoch very, very gently nudged Mr. Snow in the arm.

“Ha, haaaa! Then you do like the smell! That’s very sweet, Mr. Snow. I might’ve guessed you were a sensual man.”

Mr. Snow gave him a sidelong look.

“I have never, ever been accused of being any such thing,” he said, irony clearly coloring his voice. Enoch grinned at him. Ordinarily Mr. Snow was so, well, cold, and so controlled!

He was loosening up. Enoch was very flattered to have caused it, and very admiring of the result. Loosened up was a good look for Mr. Snow, because when he was loosened, he did seem so very much like…

Well, whatever. Coincidences. Perhaps Enoch was just looking for something that wasn’t there. Embarrassing as it was to admit, especially in the context of spending time with a human, he did seem to have something of a type.

“And yet it is true,” Enoch teased, mounting his porch. “Come on, Mr. Snow, let’s get you a glass. You really ought to know what cider tastes like, too. Then you’ll have the full experience.”

“If you insist, Mr. Summers,” Mr. Snow said wryly, and followed Enoch up into the house.

* * *

 

A few days later Enoch heard from Mrs. Daniels down the street that the family had been murdered on the night he’d met Mr. Snow. The mother and father had been exsanguinated and posed as trees in the backyard, in some kind of ghastly ritualistic display.

They had suffered. There could be no doubt about that.

The children were nowhere to be found.

Mrs. Daniels couldn’t tell him what the burial arrangements would be. This was irritating.

Enoch immediately went to go see Mr. Snow, knowing as he did that humans tended to get so very rattled when they were very near scenes of violent death. For his part, Enoch was just as mystified. He just couldn’t imagine how it had all come to pass. After all, he and Mr. Snow were the only ones to have been there that whole night.

Mr. Snow took the news all right, but he didn’t seem to want to be left alone, and he made one of his strange little smiles when Enoch offered to stay with him for the afternoon, to share some more cider and a little music. The man played the piano so well and knew so many duets for their voices. Perhaps that was only to be expected, when Mr. Snow was a former musician.

And although Mr. Snow drank nothing but tiny glass after tiny glass of a dark, dark liqueur that he swore up and down that Enoch would not like, he did serve Enoch a big goblet of the nicest, reddest wine that Enoch had ever had the pleasure of tasting. He must be right about Mr. Snow–a very sensual man, indeed.

He was going to loan Mr. Snow his almanac. He was sure Mr. Snow would be a much better book-borrower.


	2. Mr. Snow and Mr. Summers Face Down Halloween

The children wouldn’t stop coming.

Wearied beyond endurance by being ceaselessly summoned from the basement to the front door, Mr. Snow set himself up in a chair on the front porch, pouring himself sips of the latest batch of Edelwood oil and facing all the world with a great scowl. At least, he thought he was scowling. It felt like scowling.

One of the vanishingly few children to ever have escaped him in his Woods had come by earlier with a sack of cooked sugar products and suggested that he use them to pacify the hordes that were likely to descend upon his shelter. He kept the sack nearby, wary of whatever “wrecking his yard” would entail. Not on his watch.

A pair of children crept up his walk and he almost smirked at the sight of them. How they trembled! Some other children had refused to approach him at all, clinging to their parents and whining loud enough to be heard from the porch.

That was fine by him. The little brave ones were always the tastiest. If only the old ones didn’t watch so closely! 

This whole experience was a mockery. Here was breakfast, lunch, and dinner stumbling up to ring his doorbell, and he couldn’t do a thing about it! It was such a tease.

The two children dared to set foot on the first step, and when he didn’t take a swipe at them for it, they rose up the rest of the stairs. 

He watched them, sipping his drink.

“Trick-or-treat,” they chorused, voices warbling a little. 

He heaved a sigh and put a hand into the bag of sugar, retrieving several small, individually wrapped lumps. He put a fistful of them into the first child’s bag, and then the second.

As soon as they had the sugar, the children tried to bolt. 

“What do you say?” their parent called from the sidewalk. The children stopped and looked at him.

“Thank you,” they said reluctantly. 

He scowled and stuck his hand back in the bag of sugar before stretching his arm out toward the little wretches. 

“Give that to your owner,” he said coldly, passing the treats to them. There. That would send a message: what was good for the larvae was good for the progenitor. It was akin to calling the grown mortal a child to its face.

The children scarpered off and reunited with their handler. The handler was offered the sugar and gave Mr. Snow a wave, apparently delighted by the gesture. 

“Thank you, Mr. Snow!” the adult called. “Happy Halloween!”

He seethed for a moment and sipped his drink. Oh, they mocked him now, but he’d wring them dry, by the end.

Two more passels of mortals came and went before a large figure strolled up his walk without a trace of anxiety or concern. Mr. Snow sat up a little straighter and ran a hand through the shriveled leaves that grew out of his skin’s scalp.

“Good evening, Mr. Snow,” Mr. Summers said in his oddly melodic voice. He paused at the steps and let his broad, toothy smile stretch across his face. “I’m impressed by your hearty constitution. I couldn’t bear to be out here in my shirtsleeves.”

“It is a little warm, yes,” he replied. He tried a smile. He didn’t quite get the point of smiles – so few teeth in a human, all of them so blunt! – but he’d seen humans do it to each other when they wanted to be winsome.

He’d seen himself do it in a mirror. He really didn’t think he had winsome down.

Still, he tried.

Mr. Summers’ smile grew. “Mind if I join you? I’m a refugee from my own house.”

“Are you under attack?” Mr. Snow asked. “I’m happy to be reinforcements.”

“Oh, no, nothing of the kind. I just put out a bowl and went for a ramble. My doorbell is a little too…”

“Abrasive,” he said understandingly. “Mine skins my nerves. It’s something about the tones.”

“Precisely my experience,” Mr. Summers sang, mounting the steps and settling himself into a chair Mr. Snow had only acquired for symmetry. “And apparently there is such a thing as too many carved pumpkins.”

Mr. Snow stared. “What.”

“Well, I ran out of space to put them on the porch,” Mr. Summers explained, “and then I got a few complaints about putting them all over the steps.”

Mr. Snow squinted. “Why.”

“I’m as bewildered as anyone, really. They say that it makes it impossible to get up to the porch, with all of them blocking the way. But I can’t imagine why anyone would consider them to be a hinderance, when they’re the whole point of the season. Candy is so…secondary.”

Mr. Snow shook his head and sat back in his seat. After a moment, he offered Mr. Summers a black licorice. (It wasn’t like insulting a grown mortal. It was offering a favor unasked. Mr. Summers would surely understand the compliment.)

“Oh, thank you,” Mr. Summers sang. He grinned at Mr. Snow. “Do you like pumpkins, Mr. Snow? I see your own home is bereft of them…”

He twitched and found his skin doing that peculiar burning thing it did around Mr. Summers sometimes. “I don’t carve them myself, but I once had a neighbor who was…partial to them. I got used to seeing them because he and his carved all kinds of faces and expressions in pumpkins. There’s an art in it.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Mr. Summers purred. “Your neighbor certainly had the right idea.”

Mr. Snow took a quiet slug of his oil.

“I have some molasses candy at home,” Mr. Summers suggested, unwrapping the licorice and popping it in his mouth. “If you’d like any. I think it’s a very nice batch, and I’d love to give you some, particularly since the children don’t seem thrilled by it.”

Mr. Snow felt a worry lance through his lungs.

“Let me know if anyone smashes your pumpkins,” Mr. Snow said quietly. “I’ll take care of them.”

Mr. Summers stared at him, eyes widened in horror. “Who would ever do such a thing?”

Mr. Snow shrugged. “Humans are perverse. I’ve been warned that children may play tricks if they don’t receive desirable treats. I’m out here precisely to make sure they don’t ‘wreck my lawn.’”

Mr. Summers’ face hardened. “They wouldn’t dare, Mr. Snow.”

Mr. Snow didn’t dare smile again, not sure what it would look like. “Let me get you a glass of wine.”

“Oh, how kind. Thank you.”

Mr. Snow got up and disappeared into his home for a moment. He found the one wine glass and filled it with red, red fluid, carrying it back out onto the porch.

He appeared in the doorway just in time to hear Mr. Summers booming, “I see you out there!” Mr. Snow jerked his head up and spotted three shapes in lumpy costumes darting out of his hedges like startled birds, fleeing down the street and into the darkness of the park.

His hand clenched around the wine glass and he felt for the crowbar he’d left on the porch. They were going to be tree food.

Mr. Summers reached out and touched his elbow. Mr. Snow snapped his head down to look at him.

“There, now,” Mr. Summers hummed, his voice soothing. “That’ll take care of them. They just need to know this kind of behavior won’t be tolerated.”

“They just need a firm hand,” Mr. Snow snarled, “across the mouth.”

Mr. Summers chuckled warmly and took the glass from Mr. Snow. “Thank you, Mr. Snow. You certainly know how to provide a little holiday hospitality.”

Mr. Snow resumed his seat and propped one ankle on the opposite knee.

At the other end of the street, he spotted a child in a strangely familiar cone hat guiding the smaller human who had bested him from house to house.

“Give some molasses candy to these ones,” Mr. Snow suggested quietly. “I think they’ll have the taste to enjoy it.”


	3. Mr. Snow and Mr. Summers Share a Drink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ficlet from tumblr, inspired by the prompt, "Are you drunk?"

“Mr. Summers.”

Smiling at the sound of a familiar voice, Enoch turned his head and spotted his interlocutor.

“Why, Mr. Snow!” Enoch sang. “Good evening. Come out of the corner, won’t you, and join the party.”

Mr. Snow was standing by their hostess’ collection of winterized orchids, distractedly touching the airborne roots of a phalaenopsis. He peered at Mr. Summers a little, and took a slow step closer.

“Are you drunk,” he said in an unimpressed voice. 

“No! At least, I don’t believe so. Are you?” 

“No. But I smell… something. Liquor. Very strongly. Near you.”

“Hmmm,” Enoch said. The hum might’ve gone on a little too long, but just a little. He was getting better at containing himself, these days. “Well, I am drinking a rum punch. That might be it.”

Mr. Snow tilted his head and scented the air with a series of short, rapid sniffs, inflating his chest almost to bursting before slowly letting the air back out. “Yes. That’s it. Rum.”

Enoch offered the drink and gave it a seductive wiggle. “Care for a sip?”

Mr. Snow’s face assumed the general atmosphere of a suspicious frown. “What is in it.”

“Rum, apple cider, a little sugar and thyme. Lemon, I think. I don’t taste that as clearly as the others.”

Mr. Snow’s bright eyes gleamed behind a course of quick blinks. “Oh. That’s… perhaps I should not try it.”

“I insist! It’s pretty good. Nothing on the contents of your wine cellars, of course,” Enoch smiled, “but all the same, perfectly good.”

Mr. Snow slowly reached out a frigid little hand and took the glass. He held it under his nose and sniffed at it several times – Enoch was quite sure he shivered – and then put it to his lips. Mr. Snow took a little wee sip and his bright, colorless eyes went as wide as dinner plates.

He took his lips away from the glass but kept it held up near his mouth. Enoch watched the way he stood there for several seconds, and only when he slowly swallowed did Enoch realize he had been holding the punch on his tongue. Mr. Snow licked at his upper lip.

“I shouldn’t drink this,” Mr. Snow said, turning his head back to take another sip. His cheeks were turning pink and the flush was starting to attack his ears. 

Enoch grinned. “See what I mean? Not bad, is it?”

“Mmmhm.” Mr. Snow drained Enoch’s glass of several healthy mouthfuls, one after the other, and took a last little noisy slurp that left barely a third of the glass full. Mr. Snow swallowed and sighed, licking his lips, and almost went back to finish the drink before he remembered himself and pushed the glass back into Enoch’s hands.

“What do you think? Tolerable?”

“Yes,” Mr. Snow breathed. He turned his attention back to the orchids. “It’s fine.”


	4. Mr. Snow and Mr. Summers Beat the Heat

It was hot.

No disputing it! There was nowhere to go. Balmy as the air pouring out of an open oven, the heat stuck to everything everywhere. From the first moment it turned the skin ever so slightly un-dry beneath the first layer of fabric and left people to try and discreetly lift their arms up enough to permit a breeze under their armpits.

It was especially bad for those who did not have the luxury of sweating, since they could only fester and rot. Mr. Snow was one such afflicted person. There weren’t many avenues open to him: he couldn’t totally submerge himself in water, not if he didn’t want to have some kind of oil-slick incident, and utility companies seemed to want _money_ in exchange for keeping his shelter as cold as he wanted it. He had to make do as best he could.

He was making do rather well, he thought, until he was rudely interrupted by an unexpected visitor.

Mr. Summers opened the freezer door.

Mr. Snow, folded into an unnatural shape and wedged inside, gave him a look very much like a glare.

“Oh, sorry,” Mr. Summers hastily huffed. He closed the freezer door again and left Mr. Snow in the frosty darkness.

Mr. Snow sighed, deliberately unruffling his feathers. He raised his voice. “Was there something you needed, Mr. Summers.”

“No. Er. You have my apologies, Mr. Snow,” said the neighbor. Mr. Snow shifted a little inside his icy box.

“This isn’t your house,” Mr. Snow observed loudly.

“No, indeed. I didn’t intend to intrude. I just got back into town, and I’ve brought some berries back for you. You remember, for the infusions in your liquor?”

Right. Berries in Edelwood oil. The Beast didn’t know a blackberry from a blackbird and he doubted that the flavor would in any way improve his oil’s efficacy. But in the run-up to Mr. Summers’ return to his beloved and oft-mentioned homeland, it had made Mr. Summers so very happy to think that he was bringing Mr. Snow back something special.

The Beast knew it had made Mr. Summers happy. He’d smelled it.

Mr. Snow tipped his head forward specifically to knock it back against one of the freezer walls. “Yes, I remember.”

Mr. Summers opened the door. Mr. Snow tried to recoil from the heat. “Sorry, what was that?”

“I remember,” Mr. Snow snapped. “Close the door.”

“Can I give you the--?”

“Yes, yes, fine.” Mr. Summers passed him a pair of gallon ziplock bags stuffed full of frozen berries. Mr. Snow took them and wedged them in with him. Mr. Summers closed the door, at last.

“I’m going to get a water glass,” Mr. Summers sang. He had a very nice voice. “If I put it to the door I bet I’ll be able to hear you better.”

Mr. Snow nodded, not that Mr. Summers could see it, and wrapped his hands around the berries. They’d begun to melt ever so slightly from Mr. Summers’ walk over, but they were still beautifully cold on the inside. Mr. Snow shivered and shifted around, until he could slip one bag under his shirt and press it against the raw skin of his belly.

Ooh, that was nice.

He’d thought about getting into the freezer naked, without even his fur on, but now he was glad he’d worn a little something. Never mind the inconvenience of wedging his antlers in; the sight of such a thing might’ve gone and stopped Mr. Summers’ great big fleshy mortal heart, and that was scarcely to be borne. Particularly since he’d only just returned after almost two weeks.

This town was so very dull when one had to pass two whole weeks without a companionable face. In mortal lands, there were only so many long walks one could take before one wanted to just take one off a cliff.

He’d have to pull all the curtains and lock the house up and then undress completely later tonight.

The Beast heard a soft clink against the door. “There we are. Yes, I didn’t want the fruit to thaw, so when you didn’t answer the door I figured I would just put them away first and find you second.”

Mr. Snow had seen what Mr. Summers did to doorknobs in these little fits of neighborly thoughtfulness. He was going to have to acquire a locksmith. How tedious.

“These are raspberries?” he asked.

“Blueberries,” Mr. Summers replied. “Had a bumper crop this year! A little typhoon in the Spring will do that.”

“Your people are well?”

“Yes, thank you. Lots of happy townspeople. My, ah… er…”

“Grandchildren,” Mr. Snow supplied.

“That’s right, that’s what you call them -- my grandchildren seemed pleased to see me, and I to see them. They send their regards.”

Mr. Snow hummed. “What is there to do, up wherever you come from?”

“Oh, lots! Farming to handle, harvests to manage, hay to bring in, barns to tidy, buildings to raise, apples to pick, corn to roast, turkeys to milk. All sorts of chores, plus meetings and parties and board sessions and dances and church potlucks and stargazing, too. And when I had a spare moment, I admit I did spend a little while trying to look up an old… ah… hmmm, I don’t know how to put it…”

Mr. Snow listened to the dithering for a moment or two. “An old flame?”

Outside the freezer, something broke. The Beast snarled and reached to open the door.

“No,” Mr. Summers said. The Beast tried to push the door open but something was wedged against it. “No, no. Don’t worry. No need to get up. My own fault. I’m very sorry, Mr. Snow. I’m afraid I broke the glass.”

“That’s the only one I have,” Mr. Snow grumbled. “You owe me a new one.”

He heard Mr. Summers moving around outside the refrigerator and the noise of little shards of glass plinking onto his kitchen island. “Ha haaa. Of course. You can pick the very one! Why, I’ll pick up a set, and then if you like you can break five of them in a row and still have one leftover for use.”

Mr. Snow hesitantly settled down and tilted his head to face the back of the freezer, pressing his left cheek and ear to the permafrost. Mr. Summers certainly knew what to say. No wonder he was awash in grandchildren.

“No,” Mr. Summers went on. “An old neighbor, actually. Dear old friend.”

“Did you have any success?”

“No.” Mr. Summers sounded puzzled. “I can’t explain it, either. It seems like nobody’s heard of him, not in ages.”

Mr. Snow snuggled down and tucked the other bag of fruit under his chin, pleased. “In all likelihood he’s dead and dust.”

“Well, I’m not sure about that…”

But Mr. Summers wasn’t certain. Mr. Snow peeled his face off of the freezer permafrost and turned to face the door. He pushed it open just a bit, breathing in the scent of that slight uncertainty. There was even a little tinge of fear!

Ah, what a treat.

“And even if he is alive, he can’t have considered _you_ to be any great shakes,” the Beast crooned. “He didn’t even bother to leave a note?”

He felt Mr. Summers’ smile waver. Oh, this was fun!

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Mr. Summers stated. Not even the littlest lilt. Mr. Snow sipped at the steady stream of hope that flowed under the crack in the freezer door. It was worth the heat exposure. “Sometimes we’d go whole decades without talking. This isn’t anything new. I’m sure I’ll see him on the next trip.”

“Mmmm. Of course,” the Beast murmured. He angled his voice right at that ‘don’t kid yourself’ tone semi-sympathetic mortals liked to use on one another and closed the door again. Mr. Summers might’ve thought the loss of a decade here or there was nothing to worry about, but how many more decades could a man with two generations of progeny under his belt expect to see? “Well, at least you didn’t miss anything here. Someone disappeared two towns over. I believe the circumstances were somehow mysterious.”

They were in planted out in the deep woods where no one would find them. There were still a few spots where he could slip out of the corpse suit and go for a run, away from airplane flight routes and city lights. The trees weren’t tall -- never his looming woods -- but it was enough to hang the corpse over a branch and sprint across the treetops, getting the air through his branches and kicking a spark or two from his feet, and making the woods thunder with his song, even if he was the only one around to hear it.

“Dear, dear,” Mr. Summers murmured. “How terrible. How tragic. And isn’t school starting up again soon?”

Mr. Snow growled softly to himself. “Don’t remind me.”

Mr. Summers chuckled in three distinct noises. “No vacation this year for you, Mr. Snow?”

The Beast sighed. “I… no.”

“Not for want of wishing, hmmm?”

Mr. Snow shook his head. He wanted to go. There was still work to be done here -- mortals didn’t like to learn from warnings alone, so the only way to beat back the encroachment into his own woods to remind them that forests are not always hospitable, not even in the age of tiny glowing information boxes -- but he did miss it. He missed his body and the weight of his lantern in his hands, and his domain, icy and dissonant and terrible, and the luscious scent of lost children.

But out here his souls were easier to manage. None of the mortals he’d consumed since he’d come here had ever so much as heard of Pottsfield, much less caught its scent.

When was the last time he’d spoken to the lord of Pottsfield? Twelve moons? Twenty-four? He must be long forgotten by now. Out of sight, out of mind. Enoch wasn’t mortal but he had adopted a few of their habits and the Beast would be surprised if absent-mindedness wasn’t of them. Enoch had always kept a very busy little social schedule and seemed to have a thousand-thousand things to do and people to keep track of. One less voice from the woods probably wouldn’t intrude even the least bit on his consciousness.

The Beast wondered if the town was well.

“Perhaps I’ll go in the winter,” Mr. Snow said at last, and the suggestion became a decision before he was halfway through voicing it. “I will go up and stay in the snow for a few weeks.”

“That sounds lovely! Are you also from the North?”

“Yes,” Mr. Snow said. “But not too far. Maybe three days’ walk up, and then another two out into the woods.”

Mr. Summers hummed happily at what he must’ve thought that distance was, but he didn’t know that Mr. Snow could walk day and night, without stopping. “Ahhhh. Beautiful country.”

“Hm.” Mr. Snow shifted in the freezer. “Maybe I will look up an old neighbor, too. I know precisely where he is and I ought to pay him a call.”

Perhaps they’d walk around the edges of Pottsfield together on a moonless night. The Beast would get all the Unknown gossip he could want from Enoch, and he return he could share an amusing anecdote or two about living mortals. He wouldn’t admit to going among them in this ridiculous costume, of course, but Enoch had a wonderfully cruel sense of humor and would probably delight in hearing some of the more picturesque follies the Beast had observed.

Enoch might laugh. Everything smelled good when he laughed.

“Your neighbor, the pumpkin-carver?” Mr. Summers asked in a tone he must’ve thought was very sly. The Beast still didn’t quite have the hang of glowering with a mortal face, but he gave it a shot, guessing about where Mr. Summers would be beyond the freezer door.

“That is him,” he said darkly. “We have certain property agreements and I have an obligation to check on him now and then. He’ll want to cut down more of my woods when I see him. He has ideas about architecture.”

“Tsk, tsk. No appreciation for the beauty of the untamed wilderness.”

“‘Beauty’ is a little strong.” Mr. Snow shifted in the freezer. “I’m going to come out soon. I will pour you a drink.”

Mr. Snow usually gave Mr. Summers a cup of blood to drink. At first it had been a secret unkindness devised to make an unwitting cannibal out of a too-trusting mortal, but Mr. Summers had liked the taste and praised it. As the acquaintance went on Mr. Snow had come to like the praise more than the tiny cruelty of the prank and finally he’d come to simply like that Mr. Summers liked the taste of blood. Mr. Summers claimed it made him feel young again, which was certainly a claim worthy of some interest.

“Oh, let me serve,” Mr. Summers said. “I'm already out, after all. You’ll have the usual? Or the… hmm. Is this rum?”

Mr. Snow’s body did that insipid thing where the old blood rose up into his face and turned him pink. Mr. Summers sounded so _smug_ sometimes. Time was, and not long ago at all, when the Beast would’ve spared no ceremony in planting any mortal that presumed to take such a tone with him, but in Mr. Summers’ strange, wet, blunt-toothed mouth… Something about it banked his ire before it even began to bloom.

In fact, the Beast had been too embarrassed by his own sentimentality to drink the rum as it was. Instead, he’d undone the stopper and just let it breathe, and then devoured the scent of the cooked sugar and shimmering alcohol. He certainly wasn’t about to go drinking rum in front of Mr. Summers.

“Liquor,” Mr. Snow grunted. “Neat.”

“Coming up.”

He dragged the bags of berries away from his skin and pushed them towards the back of the freezer. He took a last deep breath of the cold, getting it into his lungs and veins and down to breeze through the holes of his body, and then he reached out and pushed the freezer door open.

“There you are,” Mr. Summers smiled as he drew his legs out of the box. “Refreshed?”

The heat came for him immediately. Mr. Snow writhed a little but got himself onto the kitchen floor and upright in relatively short order.

“Barely,” Mr. Snow grumbled. “Hateful weather.”

“I admit I did not miss it.” Mr. Summers offered him a tiny cup full of black fluid. “Here you are.”

Mr. Snow nodded his thanks and took the glass. He peered at the hand Mr. Summers had used to offer it. “I thought you dropped my water glass.”

“No, just broke it.”

“Hm. Hold still.” Mr. Snow put the drink down and took Mr. Summers’ warm hand by the wrist. He pinched two fingers around one of the shards of glass stuck into his palm and plucked it out, setting it down neatly on the kitchen island before moving on to the next one.

“Dear me. Are there more? I’m afraid my eyesight is not what it might be.”

“Evidently,” Mr. Snow agreed dryly. He set three more shards on the table and inspected the hand carefully. “There. The rest is just splinters. Did you squeeze the glass?”

“Oh, no,” Mr. Summers said airily. “It just exploded in my hand. Can’t figure out how. One of those little mysteries in life, you know?”

“Ye-es,” the Beast replied slowly. He didn’t know if glasses sometimes exploded. He didn’t think they did, but then again he’d never used a glass before coming here. “Where’s your drink?”

“I didn’t actually get around to--”

“Of course. Well, mop up the mess and I’ll sort it out.”

Mr. Snow descended into the pleasant dank of the basement with the one wine glass. Blood when sort of nasty at room temperature, so he mixed it with water and stirred it until the worst clumps were broken up. When he returned to the kitchen, Mr. Summers had gotten up most of the mess that had dribbled out of his hand and was putting the soiled handkerchief back in his pocket.

As he offered the glass, Mr. Snow pressed his lips together and tried to thin them out. He’d practiced the gesture a little bit during the past two weeks, wanting to improve his camouflage. Unsteady on his face, the smile wobbled and flopped almost instantaneously; but it was briefly there.

Mr. Summers saw it. He grinned enough to show nearly all of his teeth and gestured with the glass in a wordless toast. Mr. Snow reached for his glass of oil and threw its contents down his throat, while Mr. Summers held the wine glass under his nose for a few moments.

“I did miss this while I was away,” Mr. Summers confessed, taking sip of the bloody water. “Mmm.”


	5. Mr. Snow and Mr. Summers Go Back to School

Back to School Night fell in the first week of October. Everyone had been talking about what a cold season it was and though the leaves were still on the trees they’d passed their first frost only days before.

He had never gone to any such event before — certainly they’d never had much use for high schools back in Pottsfield — but he’d seen posters all over town and knew that at least a little attendance was to be expected. If nothing else, the high school was where the Football happened, and he was familiar enough with human behavior to know that attending Football rituals and expressing appreciation and pathos for the dramatic displays the rituals embodied was a vital part of blending in with mortals.

Mrs. Gupta smiled at him as he approached her desk in the school lobby. The desk was covered in stickers that said HELLO, MY NAME IS. Mrs. Gupta’s smile was rictus and showed some of her premolars. He admired it as he took off his hat. Those smiles were the best kind. They reminded him of home.

“Mr. Summers,” Mrs. Gupta said. “Hi.”

“Good evening,” Mr. Summers hummed. “Do I need one of those stickers?”

“Yes, I think that’d be best,” Mrs. Gupta said. “That way everyone can recognize you.”

Mr. Summers nodded. A wise precaution. Mortals didlook so awfully alike: almost all the same size and shape, liked they’d been stamped out by a machine. Anything to help him tell one from another would be a boon, if he wasn’t going to be able to really connect with any of them enough to recognize them from resonance alone.

He picked up the pen with careful fingers and checked it over. They had lots of ways of operating these things. This one had no cap and no clicker. He frowned a little, turning the pen around in his hand.

“You twist the top,” Mrs. Gupta said. Enoch glanced down at her and grinned his thanks. He touched the top with the very tips of his fingers and rotated it 90 degrees to the right. The pen tip clicked out and he felt a bloom of satisfaction when the plastic didn’t snap in his grip.

Back in Pottsfield Miss Clara had written his letters for him, since writing implements much finer than barnside paintbrushes were extremely fidgety to operate. He had not been called upon to write much of anything by hand since he’d come here, but he knew his letters and he scratched out a slightly wobbly but admirably clear MISTER SUMMERS within the sticker boundaries. To be polite, he indulged himself with a little swoop underneath — any occasion in the temple of the Football surely merited the extra filigree.

“You can put your first name,” Mrs. Gupta suggested. Enoch chuckled gently at her joke and began to peel the sticker off its back.

“Most everybody is in the Multi-Purpose Room,” Mrs. Gupta said. She pointed down the hall. Mr. Summers patted the sticker in place on his chest. “We have refreshments and a brief musical performance, and then we’ll send parents to their children’s teachers.”

“Sounds like a plan. The Multi-Purpose Room? Thank you, Mrs. Gupta.”

“Um. Mr. Summers,” Mrs. Gupta said. Her forehead was shiny. Her premolars were lovely. “We’re glad to see you, but you don’t have any children. Do you?”

Aha! Just what he’d been waiting for. Enoch tapped the side of his nose.

“I have a lot of grandchildren, Mrs. Gupta,” Mr. Summers said. “And their parents are curious about the schooling options around my neck of the woods. I’m doing a little consumer auditing.”

He didn’t sing at all, keeping his tone at a nice, mortal clip. He was fitting in seamlessly!

Mrs. Gupta’s expression flushed with relief and she blinked her dark eyes several times.

“Oh. Yes! Yes, that makes perfect sense.” Her smiled tightened again. “We should be glad to have any of your relatives coming to this school, Mr. Summers, I’m sure!”

“Thank you,” Mr. Summers crooned. “It’s this way?”

He didn’t wait for her response (humans often left in the middle of conversations, after all ) and simply followed the sound of voices that bubbled out into the front hall. He stepped in through the open half of the double doors set into the wall.

The Multi-Purpose Room was only serving one purpose tonight: reception room. Enoch had hosted plenty iterations of this joyous species of celebration and now, as he felt the air of the room, he began to happily hum along with the age-old rhythm of communal gathering.

The ceiling seemed like it was about two storeys away. Fifteen cafeteria tables in three columns spanned from one length of the room to the other, and sound bounced off of the tile floors and painted concrete walls. At one side of the room there was a stage with chairs and a piano on it, and the walls opposite the stage hosted large posters, one proclaiming some kind of performance called SATCHMO and the other demanding the reader LEND ME A TENOR. Enoch remembered belatedly that this school prided itself on teaching the arts.

The adults were gathered to one side of the room, hovering around two tables that had been pushed together to make a long buffet. Enoch considered the culinary offerings: trays of white dry-dough cookies painted in thick, garish colors, huge plastic bowls filled to potato chips dressed in chemical-smelling green or orange specks, and a selection of two-liter jugs of soft drinks maintaining the jewel-like radiance of their artificial colors but rapidly going tepid and flat.

“Little apple cider would be nice,” he murmured to himself. A woman beside him turned with a querulous smile.

“Did you just say what I think you did?” she asked. Mr. Summers froze a little and kept a half-smile on his face, waiting to see if she’d take offense.

She didn’t. She laughed.

“That would be nice!” she replied. “God bless Cynthia and the rest of the PTA, I’m sure, but the food is pretty hideous. It’s not a great example for our kids, if all they ever see is sugar and corn syrup!”

“So badly processed, too,” Enoch agreed.

The woman turned to face him completely and gave him a great big smile. “Ha ha! Exactly. We only use agave nectar in my house and I can tell you, it’s made such a difference! I mean, you can actually taste your food, if it’s not buried under a lot of refined muck!”

“We mostly use honey and molasses where I’m from,” Mr. Summers offered.

“Ooh, yes. But anything all-natural is a pretty safe bet, don’t you think? Hi, by the way, I’m Grace. Grace Templestein. Petey Templestein’s mom.”

She offered her hand. Enoch took it and bounced it up and down. “Mrs. Templestein, it’s a pleasure. I’m Mr. Summers.”

Mrs. Templestein’s eyes widened and she looked him up and down. “Oh! So _you’re_ Mr. Summers! I—well, you’re… not as tall as I expected.”

Enoch smiled but blinked his eyes. “No?”

Mrs. Templestein’s face flushed. Enoch felt a brief thrill of terror before recognizing, with relief, that it was the redness of embarrassment rather than any of the other emotions that caused humans to blush.

“They said you were so unmistakeable,” Mrs. Templestein winced, grinning with all her heart. “I almost wouldn’t have recognized you.”

Mr. Summers nodded his head and let go of Mrs. Templestein’s tiny hand. “It doesn’t pay to stand out too much.”

“No, I imagine not.”

“Is there going to be some kind of musical performance?” Enoch asked, mostly to be polite. He knew there would be one — Mrs. Gupta had said so — but humans liked to ask questions they knew the answers to.

“Oh, yes! The orchestra and the school choir. They have a musical director I still haven’t met, you know,” Mrs. Templestein said, loosening up a little. She shook her head, smiling. “They say he’s very strict! Petey thinks he’s the boogeyman or something! He says the man ripped someone’s head off on the first day of school!”

She let out a charming tinkle of laughter and Enoch joined in, subtly, softly. Well, there weren’t many better uses for a trouble-maker’s head than ripping it off, in all likelihood. At least this musical director was economical.

“Is your son musical?”

“Oh, yes! Trombone! You should hear him play!”

“I’m looking forward to it. I haven’t been to a concert before; only to the Football games.”

“Then you have seen him! In marching band!” Mrs. Templestein beamed. “Hasn’t the team been good this year? I think we might go all the way!”

The Football was the perfect social lubricant. No one could resist.

He was still talking to Mrs. Templestein about the intricacies of the Football rituals when the Multi-Purpose Room speakers buzzed with the electronic interference of a live microphone. Everybody turned to look. A rotund little man was standing on the stage and beaming.

“Good evening, Hawthorne Heights parents and families!” the man said. “It’s my privilege to welcome you back to another superior school year. Before we send you to meet your children’s teachers, we’ve arranged a short musical performance to showcase the kind of artistic abilities our students exercise on a daily basis in our fine school. Get yourself some refreshments and take a seat, to enjoy the performance of the Hawthorne Heights High School orchestra and chorus!”

The man, who must’ve been the principal, led in the clapping, and Mrs. Templestein enthusiastically participated. She spared Mr. Summers a quick smile and a wave and went to take a seat at one of the cafeteria tables. Following her to her table would be Showing an Unseemly Interest, Enoch thought, so he wedged himself into one of the tables set three back from the stage lip.

As the adults milled about and got themselves settled, the orchestra filed in across the stage, all shiny metal and richly stained wood. They sat in their chairs uncomfortably. Their little faces were sallow and they looked unslept between their well-scrubbed squeaky-cleanness. Hot on their heels came a chorus of about fifteen or twenty students, standing to one side of the orchestra without books and, once they took their places on the stage, without moving. About half of the musicians were wearing black bottoms and white tops, while others were dressed head-to-toe in black. Enoch smiled to think how much they resembled funeral attendees.

When every child was in its place, the susurrus of conversation began to die and the adults started a scattered, uncertain clapping. Enoch joined in. The faces on the stage went grey with fear.

Hindsight being what it was, Enoch really should’ve known.

Mr. Snow stalked out of the wings and across the stage. He was dressed like his pupils, black up to the neck, and he stopped his silent, inexorable approach when he reached the left side of the stage. He turned his back to the audience without addressing them and stared at his students, holding his hands out by his sides. The clapping, which had never been to sure of itself to being with, commenced to shriveling up. Mr. Snow held up one hand and clenched a fist.

The sound snapped off.

Mr. Snow turned the hand to his students and slowly opened it. Violins went under chins. Mouthpieces were raised to lips. The chorus took a rattling breath.

Mr. Snow reached out with long fingers and touched the piano. He struck one key and let it pulse in the room. He took his hand away from the instrument and moved to the center of the stage, soundless. He held his hand up, moving his left fingers like he was still striking the keys. Silent, he tapped the rhythm out against the air and lifted the other hand to address the orchestra.

When the music began, it bubbled up from the floor of the stage to spill out into the room. The tempo was quick, reaching out with both arms to seize the audience and hold them fast. After two refrains from the orchestra, the chorus’ mouths began to pop open and shut like machines, their eyes glazed and staring at the tiny motions of their conductor’s hands. They sang.

Enoch listened diligently, trying to place the language of the song. Not English, not Spanish, not Algonquian, and yet not even something older. Either it was no language at all or it was all of them. The words— listening as hard as he could, he could not detect the words in any language. He traced mingling sounds and hints of syllables he half-knew from somewhere, but from where, from when?

The music played. Plucking, plinking strings made little leaps around the room, the heart rate rhythm set just beneath hammering and filtering through skin and bone to resonate in the chests of the listeners. Bows stabbed into the air and came back down to graze the wielder’s guts, hairs grating on hairs as breath almost disappeared down too-long barrels, battered back and forth by pressed keys and lost without a guiding light at the end of the tunnel.

The music swelled at the edges, whirling slowly around a deep, dark center of gravity that drew it through the air, spinning like a gleaming galaxy. The music moved in an accelerating rhythm, held taut by the tiny motions of the conductor’s hands. One hand made minute gestures with the fingertips, no long striking an ethereal key but twitching out the rhythm in little clenches around a fistful of air, curling and uncurling like a flexing claw. Separately, out of tempo, the other hand and arm moved more expressively, fingers stretched and aloft and gracefully swaying, elbow and wrist stirring the air, combing through the sound.

That hand lanced through the soloist, who lifted her voice with the attention of the conductor upon her. The hand snapped one-two-three instructions to the orchestra and then focused on dragged music out of the child, cueing every syllable, dragging long notes out of her mouth, sweeping away little staccato bursts.

The music was never too quiet to hear, but the audience sat like it was. They were picked up and carried along by the current around that yawning sinkhole center, the music sweeping across skins and hairs and bones, dragging them by the cells into the abyss. Once its hooks were in, the music stayed secure in the front of the Multi-Purpose Room, opening new space where it stood rather than swelling up to fill the space they had. It drew them down.

Conveyed along, dizzy in the dark, heartbeats regulated by the strings and the tiny tics of the clenching fingers, the audience listened helplessly. The fingers clenched, clenched, clenched, and the sway of the far hand moved beyond the gesticulating elbow into the shoulders and spine of the conductor. The body swayed, bobbed, whipped the music in a whirl while the children stared glassy-eyed, insane at their master, and the flutes shrilled in terror and the strings shredded themselves to tatters, and then—

Then the heartbeat hand snapped shut, ripping into the unseen flesh it had been pumping in the cage of its fingers. The music snapped off and the room sat unbreathing, the air and space collapsed with one fist into a sudden, soundless vacuum.

In the silence, Enoch realized that it had begun to snow outside. He knew it because he could hear the soft sound of crisp flakes scratching against the bones and glass of the building and shaking down into the brittle grass. He could hear the snowfall, so light and dry that it would be blown away in the morning. He knew everyone else must hear it too, even as the silence yawned.

The silence, the airlessness held the room in place like the still hand of death. Mr. Snow was a pillar of black on the dim stage, facing the transfixed children and holding them and their parents in his unbreakable grip, their little hearts stopped with the movement of his fingers. He didn’t seem inclined to move.

That could only mean that this segment was over.

Enoch brought his fleshy hands together hard. The smack fell flat, but he added another and another, and gradually their sounds inflated enough to fill the room with the noise of solitary clapping.

Mr. Snow moved at last. His shoulders jumped and he turned his head enough to let one pale eye stare out over his shoulder, catching Enoch with it and staring at him hard. No wonder the children were frozen, Enoch thought, if they were met with such a gaze. It was a frigid, beautiful stare, and Enoch could almost feel ice nipping at his nerves.

Mr. Snow didn’t smile, but Enoch knew he recognized him. Mr. Snow tilted down his chin in indulgent acknowledgement as he turned his head back to his pupils, opening his hands again. As one, the audience breathed and color flushed back into their cheeks. The children wobbled a little on the stage but responded to the tug of their puppeteer’s hands. By the time the adults realized that they should be clapping, the musicians had already launched into something much more prosaic.

None of the other songs, and there were two more after the opening piece, were anything at all so diverting. The audience knew how to clap at these, and at the end Mr. Snow stepped aside and waved at the children, indicating that they should take a bow. He did not take one himself, and when the clapping began to die he stalked off of the stage again, abandoning his pupils to make their shaky way out toward their parents.

Enoch got up from the cafeteria table with more difficulty than he’d had getting into it and ambled over to the buffet. The principal was at the microphone again, saying something about checking one’s list of teachers and and room numbers and how the first meetings would begin at 8:15, but Enoch tuned him out and poured himself a small cup of water from the water fountain wedged into the side of the room. It was something to do.

When he turned again, he almost tripped over Mr. Snow.

“It’s rude to clap in the middle of a performance,” Mr. Snow said flatly. Enoch could hear the flake of ice in his voice. “It ruins the flow of the music.”

Enoch leaned back so he wasn’t looming over Mr. Snow quite so much. “My apologies, Mr. Snow. I don’t know the conventions of fine musical performances. I don’t go to as many as I should.”

“Why have you gone to this one.”

“I have grandchildren,” Mr. Summers said with an expansive smile. “And I’m here to see if this would be a good school to put them in.”

Mr. Snow tilted his head a few degrees to one side. “Are any of your grandchildren musicians?”

“Able jug-players,” Mr. Summers said, beaming with pride. Mr. Snow stared.

The principal, seemingly relieved of his official duties, passed them on the way to the buffet table. “Ah! Mr. Snow!”

The principal reached out and clapped Mr. Snow on the shoulder. Mr. Snow shifted as if dealt a mortal blow and snapped his stare away from Enoch to transfix the principal.

“Capital performance this evening! I don’t think our music department has ever sounded better,” the principal enthused. “Very clear, crisp Russian syllables! A complicated piece, to be sure! I haven’t heard even part of a Russian requiem like that since I was a boy, and Mr. Iglesias pulled me aside just now to tell me he thought it was exceptional. Fine work!”

“Yes,” Mr. Snow said softly.

“The trick is control, of course! It’s so good to have someone who understands the value of keeping students in line! These art teachers, often so wishy-washy. No real discipline! But that’s exactly what you need for a well-oiled musical machine, isn’t it?”

Mr. Snow blinked his eyes. “I don’t think our orchestra is well-oiled just yet,” he said to the principal.

The principal let out a bark of laughter. “No? Well, if they need more rigor, I’m sure you’ll whip them into shape, Mr. Snow! It’s already a night and day difference from what it was. Don’t you think, Mister, ah… Mr. Summers?”

“Yes,” Mr. Summer agreed. “An excellent exhibition.”

The principal beamed at Mr. Summers. “A pleasure and an honor to showcase our finest work, always.” He glanced over his shoulder at the buffet. “Ah. Tell me, do they have those very strong ginger snaps this time?”

Enoch wasn’t good at flavors. “I’m not sure.”

The principal cupped a hand around his mouth. He was being confidential. “Me neither. Lost my sense of smell ages ago and I can’t really taste anything that isn’t assertive! Guess I’ll roll the dice.”

“Stay away from the cookies, then,” Mr. Summers suggested. “They’re just mush.”

The principal made an ‘oof’ noise and chuckled lowly. “Don’t tell Cindy that.” He slapped Mr. Snow’s shoulder again and again. “Good work, Mr. Snow, excellent work!”

The principal hobbled off.

Mr. Snow watched him go and looked up at Enoch with a blink of those luminous eyes. “You didn’t happen to get his name, did you?”

Mr. Summers grinned. “I’m afraid not.”

“Me neither,” Mr. Snow said, moving his eyes to stare at the middle distance. “I’ll have to wonder a while more, then.”

Mr. Summers crooned out a low, rumbling laugh. “Did you really rip someone’s head off on the first day of school?”

Mr. Snow looked at him with wide eyes. “...no.”

“Are you sure? Because that’s what they’re all saying.”

Mr. Snow’s eyebrows laboriously shifted down to meet over his eyes. “I took someone out into the hall and ate their soul,” he said firmly. “That’s all.”

“There, that’s good to hear,” Mr. Summers nodded. “I thought it was something reasonable, but you know how gossip gets around.”

Mr. Snow peered at him for another few seconds, but slowly nodded. He lifted his slim little shoulders and put them back down. “Children talk.”

“And how. Tell me, do you happen to be thirsty?”

“Always.”

“I think I have gotten a good chunk of information for my grandchildren. Do you want to go take a break and have a drink?”

Mr. Snow rolled his head on his neck. “I cannot leave. The parents will be coming into my room soon to ask questions about their children.”

Mr. Summers concealed his disappointment.

“I don’t have any wine, but I have a jug of liquor in my desk,” Mr. Snow went on. “Content yourself with water and follow me. It will be a few minutes of peace.”

“Ah! Yes, let’s do that.”

“Walk me home and I will pour you some apple cider,” Mr. Snow promised, as if he hadn’t already said enough to have Enoch following him like a puppy. They slipped out of the Multi-Purpose Room and made for Mr. Snow’s desk in the music room back off of the stage.

The parents showed up in due time, but they had enough warning to stow the jug of liquor. Although Mr. Snow had finally poured him some, Mr. Summers didn’t get to taste the liquor before parents started filtering in and he had to pour his drink into one of the brittle little bonsai trees decorating the sparse classroom.

‘Next time,’ he promised himself.


	6. Mr. Snow and Mr. Summers Get Sappy

The snow was falling in fat clumps, defying the draw of gravity like the ghosts of butterflies. Moonlight turned the woods zebra-patterned, tall pillars of black trees and white birches half-lit among the drifts.

He stood still in the growing snow, letting it settle across his shoulders and pile up on the top of his head and filter down and cling, slicky frozen to his legs. Beneath the ice of the nearby brook, water moved quieter than a whisper.

He reached out and carefully broke the child’s frozen finger, taking it away with a crisp snap. Black fluid slowly oozed out of the mangled hand and he caught it on the pads of his own fingers to test the consistency.

It was getting there. The body was going to tatters, one tall branch growing up out of the little mouth. Bark would grow over the skull soon enough.

He held his dripping fingers up to his face and sniffed. It’d be a good batch. He liked children at this age. Their first despair was their last and it was as bright and fresh as first blood.

And what a sweet child this had been! Their hopes were so abundant, so billowy, whipped up light and lacy as seafoam. Nothing else broke so splendidly in his mouth, the crunch of little dreams deflating in the air. The only ones that even came close were the heavy hopes of the very old, the hopes that were hard-won and long-held and kept in cherished secret for decades. Those hopes were so dense and delicious they made his teeth ache.

This tree wasn’t quite ready to be tapped, yet. The last piquant scraps of the child’s hope of survival were still mellowing in the untapped well of despair. He flicked a few drops of the black sap into the snowy air and scented the breeze, then he dusted his fingers of the fluid.

He turned in the snow, singing in a low tone and listening for the way his voice rebounded to him. There were other new trees not far away, most of them grown up enough that the last of the bones were finally concealed. He had to test two more trees, but at last one stark monolith was found ready to be consumed and he fitted an iron spile into a likely hole in the tree. 

Spile in place, he dragged the bucket over, set it beneath the spigot, and listened for the first black drops. It was difficult not to recall the luxury of having a lantern-keeper, when the work of planting and harvesting was so time-consuming.

Oh well. It got him out of the house.

Plink. Plink. Plink. The tree was tapped. Nothing more to do now but wait. He would have to come back and check on things after he escaped the evening’s entanglement.

He made his way back towards the spot where he’d hung up his skin. He didn’t relish the idea of having to crawl back inside the awful thing, but until his work was done here camouflage was the only way he could walk among the mortals. He should probably count himself lucky that he’d found a region with woods large enough to accommodate his trees and his proclivity for a good run.

The skin-tree wasn’t hard to find and he mounted the branches swiftly, clawing and leaping until he found the branches to which he’d hooked the skin. The snow had begun to get at it, freezing the hair in its little patches and prickling into needle-like formations across the raw interior. As he shook his way into the skin, the flesh began to stiffen and crack, his greater coldness making it less malleable and snug. Annoyed, he pulled it off and scraped the building frost out of the skin with both hands.

He should put it on somewhere warm. He couldn’t help making the inside brittle when he came in contact with it, but in a warm house the exterior side would melt and soften and he could get it to stick on. But that was impossible: he couldn’t go back to his shelter skinless. What if he were seen? Humans were weak on their own, but in groups they seemed to take some great relish in killing things like him. It wasn’t wise to tempt them to it, not when he was sure he was going to be part of a well-attended gathering in just a few minutes.

He struggled into the skin, giving the whole thing a shiver to try and settle it on his frame. The interior froze again and bulged a little, a thin layer of ice doing what absent fat couldn’t, and he twisted his head in revulsion at the way the human skin stuck to him once again. Once the clothing was on over the skin, he ran his hands over the whole apparatus, humming to himself. This was the best he could do in this weather. He didn’t know what his face looked like, really, and his fingers were twisted in the wrong directions and blackened with frostbite, but he could surely come up with some sort of explanation if he was asked about it. 

And who knew what a little warm air wouldn’t do to put things right? Maybe it wouldn’t even be noticed.

He walked slowly out of the tranquil woods, murmuring his song to himself. He’d have to go on a real hunt sooner rather than later. Little jogs weren’t cutting it.

The snow had stopped falling by the time he reached the salty slush passing cars had kicked up onto the sidewalks. (He still didn’t like cars. Too much like mortals, with all their propelling agency hidden away inside and likely to start up at the least provocation. He knew where he stood with a horse-drawn cart, but a car… no.)

He walked down along the street towards his destination and stopped beside the shrub behind which he’d stashed his offerings. He pulled out the jug and the bottle. The invitation hadn’t indicated that he needed to bring anything, but he didn’t intend to share the oil in the jug, while the bottle was just payment for his invitation. He didn’t want to be beholden.

After a moment’s hesitation, he snapped his fingers around so he could adjust the long, stringy white hair that grew out of his skin’s scalp. He smoothed the strands back and retied his hair at the base of the skull, looking down at himself to check that nothing was clinging to his clothing. He prodded his face a little, checking that the nose was in the right spot and the beard wasn’t encrusted with anything more uncouth than ice. He inhaled deeply, dragging in more cold air.

It was as good as it was going to get. He stooped down for the bottles and walked up to the front door. He rang the bell.

As usual, the first thing he saw was the grin.

“Mr. Snow!” Mr. Summers sang. “Right on time!”

“Accidentally,” he said. Mr. Summers stepped back into the foyer and swept a hand back into the house. Mr. Snow crossed the threshold and felt warmth bloom over him. The skin’s frigid tension began to fade.

“Welcome. You’re the first to arrive,” Mr. Summers said. “Can I take your coat?”

“No.” Mr. Snow offered Mr. Summers the bottle instead. “I didn’t wear one. It’s too warm.”

“Ahhh. You are a Northerner, at that,” Mr. Summers mused. He held the bottle up to the light. “Delicious! Can I hope this is your own vintage?”

He’d made it from an investment banker almost two months ago. The old woman had been so desiccated that he’d had to nearly pulp her to get any juice out, but her hopes… they jangled still around his throat, undying on his palate.

Mr. Snow nodded once.

“Thank you!” Mr. Summers sang. He pushed the front door closed and put a hand to Mr. Snow’s back, pulling him along down the hall. “Let’s pop it open, shall we, and start the evening. It won’t be long before the others show up. I’ve invited most of the town.”

“Remind me of the occasion,” he requested. There were so many, many, many reasons humans saw fit to congregate and dine. He couldn’t possibly be expected to keep them all straight.

Mr. Summers led him into the kitchen. Copper pots and pants were merrily bubbling on the stove and in the oven, emitting luscious scents of rosemary and cinnamon and roasting fat. Mr. Summers had erected bouquets here and there, full of flowers Mr. Snow knew for certain did not grow in winter.

Mr. Summers pulled the cork out of the bottle. “Death of a political dissident! A very popular winter holiday. I suppose I can see why.”

Mr. Snow frowned. That didn’t sound quite right to him. He nodded illustratively at the flowers. “Are the flowers somehow associated with the dissident?”

“Oh, no,” Mr. Summers replied. “Not specifically, I don’t think. No, it’s just that this dissident was very keen on seeing young people united in love. The flowers are symbolic of courtship and matrimony.”

“In that case, I’d have killed him, too,” Mr. Snow intoned. Mr. Summers laughed long and loud, head thrown back and throat exposed. Mr. Snow watched him and put his jug down on the kitchen island.

“You’re no romantic at all, Mr. Snow,” Mr. Summers chided.

“If it’s just a matter of replenishing a herd, you don’t need to go through all the trouble of marrying. Just do the…” What did they call it. What did they call it. He made a faltering gesture with both hands, trying to suggest what he meant. “… thing, and spawn children.”

“What? Like animals?”

“Of course. They– I mean, we are just animals, aren’t we? All mortals are.”

“Well… of course, some mortals won’t reproduce without a marriage,” Mr. Summers shrugged. He put a glass out for Mr. Snow and poured some of the watery blood into his own wine glass. “And there is the question of love to be considered. That matters a great deal to some people, you know.”

“Oh,” Mr. Snow said, disgusted. “Yes. That.”

“Hmm?”

Mr. Snow poured himself out a dram and drank the oil in a single gulp. That damned Woodsman and his constant grumbling over his daughter and what she would’ve wanted, and those two little brats incessantly saving one another, prodding and picking at him and his careful balance of control. Those mortals had loved, oh, how they’d loved each other, and then…! 

“Love must be controlled or it ends in treachery.” His mouth tasted sour and it tainted his voice. He poured another glass to wash his mouth out.

Mr. Summers slowly tilted his head—his neck made a low grinding noise—and gave him a solemn, unblinking look. “You’ve been hurt by love, Mr. Snow?”

“Oh, yes,” Mr. Snow said with a mirthless laugh. He’d been snuffed out like a candle. If it hadn’t been for the Harvest King, though who knew what had possessed him to find the lantern in the first place… “I have been undone. Unmade.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mr. Summers said slowly. “I have only ever enjoyed great results with love. I’ve seen a lot of harvests come in full from love. When the earth’s tilled and watered with love and given time to overflow with it… oh, it’s hard work every time, of course, but the rewards are worth it.”

Mr. Snow squinted at him a little. What on earth was he talking about. 

“You must have had better luck at controlling it,” Mr. Snow allowed. “In my experience, love has been barely useful at its best but absolutely devastating at its worst and in both cases it has eventually left me empty-handed. Love is unpredictable and makes mortals do unpredictable things. It is much more trouble than it is worth. The only thing you can really count on every time is good, cold dread.”

Mr. Summers grinned broadly. Without knowing why, Mr. Snow felt his skin begin to burn. “Perhaps you’re right! It’s hard to argue with you on that subject, when I know what beautiful music you can make when your students are good and scared.”

Mr. Snow fidgeted with his jug. Mr. Summers was such a mortal, really. So fleshy and human and certain to die. A little felicity of expression on his part shouldn’t make Mr. Snow’s skin behave like this. It would be disgusting if it weren’t so totally harmless.

“…if it makes them obey,” Mr. Snow shrugged. “When are the other guests arriving?”

“They should be here any minute,” Mr. Summers said, turning to look over the culinary situation. “Can I offer you anything to eat?”

“I can wait.” Eating was going to be the unpleasant part. He hoped Mr. Summers served at least one dish that was cold; feeling hot food slide down between his skin and his body was always a hideously unpleasant sensation. He didn’t even want to think about what it would be like if he actually swallowed.

“Then I’ll put out a little spread so it’s ready when people arrive.” Mr. Summers set about putting out a cheese and a rope of smoked meat and an array of crackers. 

Mr. Snow watched him, considering the steady motions of his big hands until his attention was drawn back to the kitchen window. The snow was falling again. Big dry dopey flakes whirled against the panes of glass and stuck to the mesh screen. In the woods, his oil was drip, drip, dripping down into his bucket. By morning it might be ready for the axe.

Something brushed his cheek. Mr. Snow jumped and snapped his head around, hearing a sharp crack as he went. “What–”

“Sorry!” Mr. Summers grinned. Mr. Snow’s eyes focused on an object held in Mr. Summers’ hand: a white rose, plucked from one of the bouquets. “Just a token. Maybe the next time you try and deal in love, you’ll have better results.”

Mr. Snow stared at the rose, but it did appear that Mr. Summers was indeed offering it to him. He blinked, just to check if this was a mistake in his vision, but the situation didn’t appear to change. He slowly reached out and took the rose, watching Mr. Summers’ hand retreat.

“It will wilt,” Mr. Snow said. That couldn’t be a good omen, could it? Unless that was precisely what Mr. Summers was intending to suggest. Perhaps this was a promise that the next love he had to deal with would be more temporary in duration.

But that was absurd. Mr. Summers was a mortal. He couldn’t promise any such thing.

“Oh, there are lots of ways to keep flowers,” Mr. Summers replied. “You can preserve it and make sure it stays just the way it is.”

Mr. Snow pushed his nose against the heart of the flower and inhaled, filling his body with the frail fragrance of the snowy blossom. It smelled delicate and dusky, like dust settled in a long-abandoned room. He liked it.

“Yes. I think I can.” He took another breath, sucking the scent down and down and down until there was nothing left on the flower.

Then he fit the bloom into his mouth and severed it from the stem with a precise snip of his teeth. The petals were soft and fleshy, as dense and heavy on his tongue as a weighted heart. His teeth pounded to sink into the rose and he almost chewed before he caught himself. Instead, he closed his lips and let the blossom freeze solid in his mouth. He swallowed it whole.

There. That would stay nice and close. Who knew—maybe it would prove to be as much a piece of luck as a witch heart or a rector’s hand. 

When the blossom was gone, he licked his lips and glanced up at Mr. Summers. The mortal was staring at him with a slightly incredulous look on his face. Mr. Snow felt contentment drain out of his body and hastily slapped the stem down on the kitchen island.

“It was good,” he said quickly. “Thank you.” 

He prodded one of the thorns until it broke his skin. He let it scratch across the nerve endings in his fingertip for a while before he pulled it out.

“I’m glad,” Mr. Summers said, beginning to smile again. “Let me know if you’d like another. I didn’t know people could eat roses. I’ve only ever seen them eat pumpkin blossoms.”

“I’m fine,” Mr. Snow mumbled. He had another glass of oil.

No one else came to Mr. Summers’ dinner party. Mr. Snow asked about an invitation list, intending to visit some retribution on these impolite guests, but Mr. Summers claimed that he’d just made up the party on the spot and didn’t really mind the snub, as long as he had at least a little good company. Who that could be Mr. Snow couldn’t begin to imagine.

Mr. Snow did have to eat food, and quite a lot of it. By the time he left, well-past midnight, he marched right back into the woods to shake his skin inside out and scoop it clean. 

He found it hard to mind, though, especially when the frozen rose fell out along with the masticated dinner. He rubbed the rose clean and tucked it away under his fur.

Surely it would come in handy. He’d just hold onto it until then.


End file.
